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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131709">All Alone Feeling Empty</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/delsalami/pseuds/delsalami'>delsalami</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Jagged Little Pill - Morissette &amp; Ballard/Morissette/Cody</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Acceptance, Character Development, Character Study, Coming Out, Depression, Gen, Identity Issues, Internalized Homophobia, Personal Growth, Post-Canon, Repression, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery, maybe? - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:33:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,602</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131709</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/delsalami/pseuds/delsalami</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick only knew one thing about himself, and it was something he couldn't share.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nick Healy &amp; Mary Jane "MJ" Healy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>All Alone Feeling Empty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>any character: does not have or mention romance<br/>me: they're gay<br/>also Nick Healy screams repression</p>
<p>title from Pressure by Paramore bc it's very fitting and I'm emo and I can't title and I love women</p>
<p>anyway this was born from another, longer fic. but I'll probably never post that because it has no actual direction and thus will probably never have... an ending. so I took everything I was communicating in there on Nick's behalf and put it in here and it's much more, uhhhh, readable. enjoy</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> Nick looked. Of course he did; he was curious, it was natural. And it wasn't like he was looking while they were in the <em>showers</em> or anything; that would be invasive. He just... glanced. Occasionally. While they were shirtless. While they were warming up. While they were training. It was harmless. </p>
<p> But then they caught another boy looking. He'd denied it; that was just what you did. You denied it. Pretended you weren't looking. But even still, everyone else kept sneering, kept shoving, kept shouting, until the boy quit the swim team. </p>
<p> Nick kept his eyes firmly away from his teammates from then on. It was not natural, it was not harmless. It was wrong, and it was bad. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> Nick grew up and didn't grow into anything new. He couldn't. He didn't have time because of the teams and clubs and extracurriculars he was in, and he couldn't quit those in order to try new things, things he might like, because what would his mother think? What would university admissions officers think? Besides, what would he even do? His mother had decided everything he'd ever done in his life up to that point. </p>
<p> Frankie, on the other hand, grew up and grew into a person. She had passions and hobbies and eventually a poetry award and over 100 volunteer hours and at least twice as many arguing-with-Mom hours under her belt. The phrase "she's just trying to shock us for attention" was uttered more and more frequently and Nick wondered why their mother wouldn't just give Frankie attention, then. Ask her about SMAC (or even just remember what it was) and her friends and her life, all of which were changing and innovating daily, instead of Nick's life, which was the same stubbornly unchanging loop every week. He'd never, ever shocked his parents. </p>
<p> Occasionally, Frankie would come downstairs for breakfast with a protest sign in her hand. Their mother would sigh and repeat that stupid phrase, and their father, if he was home, would put his hand on her shoulder to try and communicate something that none of them understood. </p>
<p> Nick thought about joining SMAC. He really did. He wanted to support his sister and her memberless club and he wanted to <em>have interests</em> but he just couldn't. Every second of his life was booked up in order to achieve something that wouldn't matter in 15 years, so he couldn't give up his weekends to protest for a cause, even if he believed in it. He didn't even know what he believed in. </p>
<p> Once, Frankie came downstairs holding a brightly coloured sign—a rainbow, a pride flag. Nick asked her what it was for, like he usually did, and she informed him that one of her classmates, who was gay, was physically assaulted by some of Nick's classmates, who were let off with a warning instead of any sort of actual punishment.</p>
<p> Nick hadn't known about that, and now that he did, he wished he didn't. Frankie hadn't said who the perpetrators were. They could have been in any number of his classes. Now he was more worried than ever that someone would find out his secret that he kept under lock and key. And that they would hurt him for it. </p>
<p> "Really," Nick's mother mumbled as Frankie went to pour herself a cup of coffee, "Whatever the professionals decide isn't good enough for her." </p>
<p> It turned out that no one had to find out his secret in order to hurt him for it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> Eventually, after everything, Frankie told Nick that she had come out, and that their mother had said, "Now you're just trying to shock us." Nick cringed and wrapped his arms around Frankie and tried to tell her he was—</p>
<p> But he couldn't. If he didn't say it out loud, maybe it wasn't real. And if it wasn't real, his mother couldn't be disappointed in him. </p>
<p> Even though his mother was already disappointed in him enough to have slapped him. Maybe it couldn't get worse. </p>
<p> Nick knew that it could, and it would, when he finally told her that he was going to give up his Harvard acceptance, after much deliberation and advice from his therapist. She would cry, probably, and tell him, "You've worked too hard these past twelve years to give that up." But <em>she </em>had worked him that hard, like he was a tool, an instrument. (He'd never liked the cello.) He'd never wanted to work that hard. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> A little later, Nick told his mother that he wouldn't be going to Harvard that September, and she did cry, but she didn't say anything. She just gave him a hug while he cried too. </p>
<p> His entire life had been working toward nothing. Twelve years of not having enough time to get a hobby he enjoyed, or make friends, or learn almost anything about who he was, in favour of extracurriculars he'd never liked, all leading up to lying on his living room couch, having completed the homework for his two community college classes, nose buried in a self-improvement book. </p>
<p> He still didn't know anything about himself. Some people, like Frankie, discovered themselves in high school. Every time he'd expressed concern about it to his mother, she'd said, "You'll figure it out in college." </p>
<p> But Nick wasn't in college. He was on the couch. He didn't really do anything anymore. At first, it was because he was burnt out and needed a break. Then it was because he realized he'd <em>hated</em> all those things he'd been doing his entire life and he wouldn't, couldn't, go back to them. Now it was because he was paralyzed by choice; there were so many things he could try... and he'd be bad at all of them. He hadn't been bad at something in a long, long time. He wasn't sure he'd be able to handle it now. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> His therapist knew all that stuff, all about his relationship with his mom, about how he didn't—couldn't bring himself to—do anything, but it took him months to even tell her he was gay. She worked through it with him; they discussed how he found out, how it had affected him, who knew, and why the answer to that one was nobody. </p>
<p> Nick was disappointing his mother already. She gave him this sad smile when she saw him <em>not being at Harvard</em> and Nick knew it was out of disappointment. She'd had this entire plan built up for him, and it was crumbling toward the middle, but it could still be saved. It could still be saved if he got his act together and went to whatever pretty-good school would still accept him and got whatever prestigious degree she'd envisioned and got a high-paying job in that field and then met a nice woman and gave his mother grandchildren. </p>
<p> So he and his therapist set out to dismantle his conception of his mother's plan and the importance it held for him, because it was <em>his</em> life, and frankly, he'd never even asked her what the plan was. He was just living by his own expectations of his mother's expectations of him. His therapist told him that if he wasn't ready to let go of his mother's Plan as a whole, he should let go of his own perception of it. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> Sometimes at dinner, his parents would ask Frankie about boys—and then girls, very quickly, like they'd forgotten until the sentence was already finished—and she'd keep finding ways to reiterate the fact that she wasn't ready to be dating. Nick stayed out of it (that was a common theme, wasn't it?). Everyone knew perfectly well he wasn't meeting anybody, or leaving the house to see anybody, and Nick knew his mother thought it would make him insecure to push the issue with him. </p>
<p> Frankie and Phoenix had hung out the previous night, and of course their mother asked Frankie about it, and Frankie insisted they were just friends because she had pretty much ruined any potential for romance between them, and Nick spoke up, and asked if he could say something. Frankie gave him a weird look because he'd cut off the end of her sentence, but nodded slowly along with everyone else. </p>
<p> "I'm gay," Nick said. </p>
<p> Frankie was the first to react. She tackled him in a hug from the side, and Nick was glad they'd both put their cutlery down first, and she yelled in his ear about how proud she was of him. Their dad was next, and he didn't move, but he told Nick that he loved him very much. Nick tried not to turn to his mother expectantly, but he couldn't help it. </p>
<p> Her face was blank, and Nick tried the visualization trick his therapist taught him, taking apart The Plan brick by brick, to stop himself from crying preemptively. </p>
<p> Frankie had broken from the hug, now, but she kept a protective hand on Nick's shoulder, as both she and their father turned to look at the silent woman. </p>
<p> "I love you no matter what," she finally said. "And I'm so proud of you, regardless of who you love, or what school you go to, or what you do." </p>
<p> The Plan in Nick's mind crumbled, and so did his resolve. He started crying, and his mother stood up to give him a hug, and Frankie hugged him again, too, and his dad got up to wrap his arms around the three of them. </p>
<p> So Nick's family knew everything Nick knew about himself, which wasn't much, but it was more than any of them had a year ago. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hi please leave comments and kudos &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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